Do you happen to know what the title translates to? There's a site I use that has not failed me yet on having various series, but theres nothing listed there with the japanese title used in the Youtube video.

_________________"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." ~C.S. Lewis

I watched the first part of it, it's alright . It really is the lowest form of Humor, that one big guy singing "Don't Cry" and the Principal with his short speech that lets the Teachers (?) break down and cry .I'll watch the rest later and see if it gets any better .

For the record, at least last I checked, japan has a very different view on "young" than america tends to.

The age of consent is as low as 13 in some places (it varries), and the old school "women marrying older men, because they already have the means to support them" is very much a real mentality, though by no means universal (or even a majority, I don't have detailed information in that reguard)

By the end of 8th grade, you are doing things up to and including full time jobs should you fail to get into highschool.

The result is that 15, depending on the person naturally, can easily be considered young adult, complete with the responsibilities of an adult, and not a child at all. (ie, "fair game")

Adult, is a cultural thing. Just a few hundred years ago people rarily lived past 40, and 14 was full blown adult hood. You're life is more than 1/4th gone.

Essentially, (past onset of puberty) you are an adult when you're taught/expected to be an adult, and that age is somewhat lower than the 18-21 of america.

_________________

Your rules are yoursMy honor is mine.Perspective is everything. We are Exiles, and our home is Painted with the blood of trespassers.

Sorry to stray away from the current conversation, but I think that another good "starter" anime is Cowboy Bebop. Granted, it can be a bit adult at times, but it has some great themes, like betrayal, redemption, and the like, and it has great animation, especially for it being the late 90's. Also, Spike is just an all-around awesome character. Personally, I like watching it in Japanese with English subs, but that's because I feel like English voice actors NEVER get it right. And I can read pretty quickly, so it doesn't bother me. To each their own, I suppose.

_________________Booker DeWitt: Well, you only live once. *drinks Possession vigor*

TheColdestHeart wrote:Sorry to stray away from the current conversation, but I think that another good "starter" anime is Cowboy Bebop. Granted, it can be a bit adult at times, but it has some great themes, like betrayal, redemption, and the like, and it has great animation, especially for it being the late 90's. Also, Spike is just an all-around awesome character. Personally, I like watching it in Japanese with English subs, but that's because I feel like English voice actors NEVER get it right. And I can read pretty quickly, so it doesn't bother me. To each their own, I suppose.

While it's not personally to my tastes, I agree that Cowboy Bebop is a good place to start. Mostly on the grounds that at least half of the other anime guys I'm friends with got into it through Bebop

While I always prefer original audio with subtitles, I have to recognize the constraints put on a dubbing team which makes producing a high-quality dub very difficult. There's the stereotypical lip-desynching which constrains lines to force certain wordage that tries to fit the original mouth movement as close as possible along with the fact that the length of the line (how long they're speaking) is predetermined due to the original audio which further constricts what can be said. English voice actors are rarely at fault as to why the lines feel off, because it's in the writing where most of the problems lie. Then you have things like jokes that only make sense in the original Japanese (puns involving multiple pronunciations of the same Japanese character, a character misinterpreting Engrish for what the Engrish syllables mean in Japanese instead, etc) which means either an entire scene has to have its script changed to remove the joke or they have to somehow rework the joke to half-way make sense in another language which is generally a lose-lose situation because either way you're removing the original nature of the scene.

There's alot of simply inherent problems with the process. The all-around good dubs I've seen use things like off-camera shots to allow more time for dialogue to take place and make it more constrained. If you can, go find both the subbed and dubbed version of the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist (the first series, not Brotherhood) and watch them back to back to get a good idea of what I mean. The dub uses shots where the speaking character is offscreen to continue with a line of dialogue past when that particular line in the sub had finished. It allows the actors to be more free in their delivery and generally creates good and even great performances simply by letting them have the space needed to actually act

_________________"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." ~C.S. Lewis

Yeah Cowboy Bebop is a pretty great starter since it really doesn't follow anime stereotypes, simply it is one of the least anime anime. It doesn't have issues with the artistic limitations, for instance there are real facial gestures aside from symbols that are often associated with emotions. It's nice series, in fact what is odd is most of the episodes are filler. But that's kind of the way it works, it's just telling you the life of these people with some larger story tied in. But generally, they're just dealing with smaller issues and more personal things. A space Noir with nice jazzy music, funny characters, interesting single stories, and excellent artwork. It is definitely my favorite anime, and if I had to say one anime was the highest quality out of all of them I'd give it to Cowboy Bebop. It doesn't rely on the fact that it's an anime, it just is an anime.

I really just watch anime at random. I give it 3 episodes to engage me, if it fails at that point I find another.

Hunter x Hunter didn't have me after 3 episodes, but it's one of the few I stuck with and didn't regret. Still one of my all-time favorites.

It's mostly because of this that I believe the Harem genre to be one of the two genres that would be bad starting points for a newcomer.

I would recommend against starting there (unless it's your specific taste concept) because Harem is easily one of the most recycled and least innovative genres in anime. Anime is growing here in part IMO because there's really not a whole lot of other equivalents to it, particularly in cartoons but even in general. You see a lot of concepts ranging from flat out bizarre to intense to just plain interesting/mind**** type deals. Harem bypasses all that, occasionally throwing in magic dudes/girls/whatever but largely sticking to a formula such that you can predict the result by episode 1-2, even if you've only seen a few of them.

The odd exception that deconstructs that is way too much of an exception. At this point I think the writers need to just pick the "winning girl" at random just to troll people, even with the uneven character development and perhaps in spite of it, because even THAT would be an improvement on the formula ^_^. I did like the one where the dude had a choice of all kinds of different girls including several supernatural ones, his childhood friend, etc and picked someone else completely causing some bat **** crazy reactions in the process. There's another one where the dude sleeps around too much and gets murdered hahaha. I'll not name these as it'd be too spoilerish, but just because they were different, I liked them more than I might have on story/own merits.

Mecha has similar problems, though not QUITE as bad.

Inuyasha, generally considered a good starter since it has a lot of themes that are cross cultural while also being pretty simple, has the character Kagome. She is heavily sexualized throughout, naked bathing, people peeping, being captured naked, people trying to **** her, and a lot of the artwork is designed to entice you. She's 15 years old.

IIRC the age of consent in Japan is lower than in the US. But more importantly, when you yourself are in the 13-17 age range, it doesn't seem all that gross to think along those lines for someone who's 15 (in fact it would be common for younger guys). Combining the age of consent with the probable initial target audience of the show (likely teenagers and younger predominantly, it IS shounen right?) it's really not implausible.

I don't know, it affects different people differently. The fact that none of these people are real or even act very much like any real people I've encountered (aside from the occasional plausible decisions) seems to separate it from reality quite firmly in my mind, though I could see how it would bother someone if it doesn't.

Actually there is one harem I can recommend, I believe it counts. Tenchi, at least the original 3 series. They have their fanservice of course, but some decent plots and characters. One of my favorite episodes in any anime is actually just the episode where Tenchi, His Father, and His Grandfather reminisce about Tenchi's dead mother for an entire episode. The harem girls aren't even around, it's just a tight knit family talking about good times and mourning someone close to them. Every now and then it just had good episodes, but generally it was pretty standard.

Actually a semi-good starter might be Yu Yu Hakusho. It probably has the greatest first two episodes of anything I've ever watched, though it seems like every ounce of artistic talent was poured into those first two episodes because after them it gets pretty generic. Still, it's nice to watch for just the start.

Actually there is one harem I can recommend, I believe it counts. Tenchi, at least the original 3 series.

It definitely counts for the genre, and it beats your standard "daily school attendance" variant soundly in terms of character development (well, some iterations of it do anyway), but it still doesn't do much to stand on its own without the harem aspect that other choices couldn't do better. It's a "classic" in the sense that it's been around forever though.

I kinda want to start watching Army of Chinese Spidermen..... er- Attack on Titan

Go! Fight actual historic battles...such as against this Giant Enemy Crab! With real time weapon swap!

_________________There is no "I" in team. There is no "we" either. There is a me.Dolan would like you to turn around and pick up that item on the ground.

So you guys seen that one anime about the boy in high school who has something supernatural unexpectedly happen to him and starts him off on an adventure of personal growth and by the end has become the best at what he does as well as being in a solid relationship with a female character?

I like that one.

_________________"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." ~C.S. Lewis

Reaperfan wrote:So you guys seen that one anime about the boy in high school who has something supernatural unexpectedly happen to him and starts him off on an adventure of personal growth and by the end has become the best at what he does as well as being in a solid relationship with a female character?

Akira definitely, possibly the most beautifully drawn anime ever created. On a visual artistic scale it is pretty overwhelming, then again considering for an anime film it had a budget of 11 million that isn't surprising. Just a heads up though, it features child nudity, the murder of children on screen, extreme gore, etc. This is a film that is rated R for a reason.

But yeah, atypical of anime every character is visually distinct. Everyone has their own entire facial structure that is drawn, creases, wrinkles, eye placement, teeth, hairs, etc. People don't just have mouths that open and close, you see their teeth and tongues, you see them actually enunciating every letter and sound rather than having just a simple mouth open and close signifying they are speaking. It's the most detailed anime I've ever seen, no corners were cut. I can't stress this enough, there really isn't anything else like it that I can think of.

Blue GenderGundam(All except Seed/Destiny)Neon GenesisGurren Lagann(This drill will pierce the heavens!!!)Big OZoids(I liked it but I wouldn't recommend for entire seasons)MacrossBlue Sub No.6------Gungrave(the first 13 episodes are hard to keep going but it shows the back story of it)Samurai ChamplooRourin KenshiCowboy Bebop(One of the best animes out there)Outlaw StarFull Metal Brotherhood and RegularTrigun(Gotta love Vash! For Peace and Love!!!)Dragonball/Z!Elfen LiedHellsing(OVA included)Initial DDevil May Cry(Not the game)Roni WarriorsBersek(The Manga is much better FYI)

There is much more but that gives you an idea where to start. Most of this is "mainstream" anime but these can branch out your anime preference.

Reaperfan wrote:So you guys seen that one anime about the boy in high school who has something supernatural unexpectedly happen to him and starts him off on an adventure of personal growth and by the end has become the best at what he does as well as being in a solid relationship with a female character?

Reaperfan wrote:So you guys seen that one anime about the boy in high school who has something supernatural unexpectedly happen to him and starts him off on an adventure of personal growth and by the end has become the best at what he does as well as being in a solid relationship with a female character?

I like that one.

Oh yeah, I love Ghost in the Shell!

I tried for forever to come up with a witty response to that. I failed at this task. Good show.

I'll accept my defeat by going back to watching Kanon and knowing that every happy moment and instance of genuine and heart-warming laughter they make me experience is all a tool to make whatever they're going to throw at me in the end all that much more soul-crushing and emotionally destructive.

SHUT UP I HAVE NOT BEEN JADED BY CLANNAD.

Seriously guys, watch Clannad. It's beautiful.

_________________"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." ~C.S. Lewis

I've amassed quite the backlog this past week (for lack of a better term, since I guess it's not really a backlog if I just came up with the list recently, huh?) and while I have no idea what order I'm tackling them in, I can say Angel Beats is indeed on the list.

_________________"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." ~C.S. Lewis

Yeah I've already tackled quite a few series in the past weeks. Psycho-Pass was my latest accomplishment. Right now I'm watching "Regardless of My Adolescent Delusions of Grandeur, I Want a Date!" (Yes that's the full title:D ). Here's a picture:

It's very much a high school anime, but it was recommended to me by multiple people, and quite frankly, it's really funny.